MacLaughlin Playground

I believe it can mean disaster for an individual to go from childhood
to maturity and never experience that communion, that deep peace...that miracle of trees
and parks which bring to the human being the excitement of the whole, vast universe.
--Ruth MacLaughlin, 1968

Ruth Peterson MacLaughlin was a Riverdale resident and an assistant to former Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo, who worked for many years to improve the quality of life in the Bronx. MacLaughlin was born on July 10, 1910 in Portland, Oregon, and attended college in Los Angeles, California. The beauty of the natural surroundings of her hometown, the Rose City, also inspired her to help develop new parks in the urban landscape of New York.